Yes, Paris is a Great as They Say
On Winter Birthdays and cultural curiousity
Why does it seem that everyone else has a birthday during the beautiful months of the year? Mine is at the end of January. The holidays are well over and the world is hanging on in perpetual darkness until the clocks change in March and daylight comes back into our lives. In 2013, facing another birthday in cold, rainy Seattle, I decided to take control of my fate and spend two weeks in Paris, France, instead. If I was going to celebrate another birthday in the middle of winter, it was going to be a Paris winter. If it was going to rain, it was going to be French rain.
I had never been to France before, so the excitement of the finally seeing the City of Lights consumed me. I loaded myself up on guidebooks and maps, and began following interesting expats-in-Paris-bloggers. One of my coworkers encouraged my independent-woman-in-Paris vacation with tales of her own, when she spent a month in Paris just going to cafes, walking to museums, and treating herself to French lingerie.
After my experience blundering around Italy on my own in 2011, I was sold on the idea of a group tour. No worries about getting lost, planning the day, figuring out trains, being scammed by a smooth talking waitress, or struggling at the language barrier. I had also missed out on any informative narrations to explain what historic features I was riding past on my bike, and in Italy there is a LOT of old stuff to ride by. I remember being so enchanted by medieval castles perched on hillsides and sleepy lakeside villages, but my non-English-speaking guide just shrugged like the scenery couldn’t possibly be worth mentioning. We never stopped for food during our rides, either. Cafes with panini? Nope. Gelaterias with heaps of cold flavorful gelato? Nope. To this day I know that I am the only person to have bonked in Italy. I wanted to see Europe and return home with stars in my eyes like everyone else. I wanted to have a professional guide take as long as necessary to explain a painting or crumbling,1000-year-old church. I wanted to stop and learn about local food and eat with abandon. I wanted to satisfy my curiosity and need for the knowledge of another culture. To know that America isn’t just “it.”
With those goals in mind, I poured over the Rick Steves Europe trips and they had a perfect weeklong tour of Paris at the end of January overlapping with my birthday. The tour’s price was even lower in the winter. All the signs were pointing to making the best decision of my life, thus far. I added a few extra days on either side of the tour to adjust for jet lag and my own explorations. The precious, paper airline tickets held the promise of eating macarons for two weeks solid.
On the Importance of Travel Journals
The following story is what I wrote in my journal the first two days in Paris. I stumbled on it years later, and I’m so glad that Paris-Me took the time to write out the excitement I was experiencing. Re-reading the entries written in blue ink, I can go back in time and smile. Sitting alone in a Paris café, I would try to act busy and like it was totally normal for me to be there. The covers of my guidebooks were cleverly wrapped in decorative paper so not to give me away as a tourist (until I opened my mouth) and I would covertly flip through their contents and scribble notes about what to see next. Cuddled up in the bed of my Latin Quarter hotel room, I would begin neatly writing page after page of the day’s events chronologically, but then other significant memories would pop up and I would squeeze them vertically into the margins or apologize to myself for forgetting it earlier.
Unfortunately, my detailed entries stopped after the first few days. Once the group tour began, I was swept up in such wonderful experiences that writing things down each night seemed to acknowledge their finality. I wanted to collapse at the end of the day in my tiny Paris bed, exhausted in such happiness that I would continue everything in my dreams. In hindsight, I do wish I had jotted down special memories each day, but I fully understand Paris-Me’s first crush on a culture. Luckily, I have countless photos and even trinkets and receipts and business cards to trigger my memories and I’m surprised how much they’ve flooded back. Still, this is a good reminder about how important it is to write experiences down each night, if not periodically during the day. Social media has really replaced jotting down those memories, but no, it can’t substitute for your own emotions and words in the moment. They should never be lost so that you can’t re-read your words years later and be so proud of who you were at that time.
Bundled up in front of the Louvre.